Honey
by OpheliacAngel
Summary: Dean cried out for Sam, figuring that Gabriel may have healed his throat, and he wasn't wrong but the word morphed into something else as it pulled up out of his abused throat. Fill for h/c bingo amnesty for the prompt 'planet destruction.' Debriel or Gen if preferred.


**Title:** Honey

 **Author:** OpheliacAngel

 **Pairing:** Dean/Gabriel (or Gen if preferable)

 **Genres:** Angst/Hurt/Comfort

 **Rating:** Teen

 **Summary:** Dean cried out for Sam, figuring that Gabriel may have healed his throat, and he wasn't wrong but the word morphed into something else as it pulled up out of his abused throat.

 **A/N:** Fill for h/c_bingo amnesty for the prompt 'planet destruction.'

 **Soundtrack:** Lacuna Coil's new 'Ultima Ratio'

* * *

 _~Save me_

 _Before I fall apart_

 _Come closer to me while I_ _'m still alive_

 _It never ends, it never ends~_

* * *

Rather than stumble around in the dark, Dean waited. He waited for light that he knew would not come, waited for the sound of his brother's voice calling his name, waited for an armful of little brother to limit further his already depleted oxygen intake, courtesy of the sky raining dust or ash or whatever was worse, making his eyes tear up and coughs rip their way out of his razor-blade throat.

He waited for a sign even though he didn't believe in signs, because what the hell else could he do?

Dean slept and he weighed his options and he panicked without working himself up into too much of a frenzy. As far back as he could remember, the world had ended four days prior, give or take a day (or two). It must have been during the night when Dean was mere inches from Sam, when Dean was sleeping the sleep of the dead after drinking a glass (or four) of top-shelf scotch. If this wasn't the end: the absolute darkness that only a complete absence of sunlight could bring, complete silence, no signs of life… then Dean didn't know what was. He inched out into the darkness at several points throughout each day, tried to keep track of the hours to keep track of the days, yet Dean feared what was out there in the dark, what he couldn't see, what he couldn't defend himself from.

So Dean's progress was slow and hope even slower to take root in him. He had screamed so long and so hard for Sam that now he couldn't even make a sound. He had waited for so long that he was losing his mind.

And then Gabriel found him.

At first, Dean didn't know it was Gabriel. There was light searing his eyelids when he woke, and that was what felt like too much of a dream for him to pull himself further awake. The odds of massive disappointment couldn't convince him to open his eyes, until he lay there blinking for what felt like hours and realized that he was awake and that the light wasn't coming from above him, and that it was way too bright to be campfire.

He crawled on the cracked, dry concrete until he found his legs, though it took him a lot longer than that to find his balance. The light was so bright and he'd been in darkness for so long that his eyes burned and he itched at them, scratching incessantly as he stumbled forward, trying to figure out the source of the light until a hand pulled at his own, tearing it away from his eyes, and the light dimmed until Dean could make out a face.

The light was the color of honey, the texture of it shifting and shimmering like it was more than just air. He could breathe easier too, like the world had been shoved back behind some veil, a bubble of Gabriel's construction. The color of the light was the color that Gabriel's eyes had been, exactly how Dean remembered them because he hadn't seen the life leave them when he sacrificed himself. It had been the color of Gabriel's hair too, and still was as the archangel's long-remembered face split the light in two.

Dean cried out for Sam out of necessity he find his brother, figuring that Gabriel may have healed his throat, and he wasn't wrong but the word morphed into something else as it pulled up out of his abused throat. He couldn't hear it but he could feel it, _his name_ , could feel it roll off his parched tongue and settle comfortably in the light around them.

 _Gabe._

Gabriel obviously didn't put the pieces together that Dean couldn't hear, but the hunter could read his lips well-enough. 'Are you okay?'

Dean shook his head, mouthing _Sam_ and looking futilely around him until Gabriel grabbed his shoulder and pulled him closer, putting him completely inside the confines of the light. Just moments before it had parted as Dean walked into it, never fully touching him, but now it felt soft and warm, trying to take his mind off of everything that was stressing him out. He rebelled against it because damn Gabriel if he tried to get him to forget about Sam, but the light wrapped itself tighter around him, like a blanket, and with awe Dean realized that this was _grace._ Leaking out of Gabriel.

How the hell had he found him?

Gabriel patted a patch of ground beside him that hadn't been there a second prior, and Dean sat for a bit before getting up to pace again. Repeatedly he talked, trying to see if he could hear, asking why Gabriel couldn't give him his damn hearing back if not his voice, but after a while he forgot what he was even saying. The continual shift in the light around him convinced Dean that Gabriel was talking even without looking at him, talking incessantly despite knowing that Dean couldn't hear him, but he wondered whether the archangel was doing it to try to calm him down. Or calm the both of them down.

Maybe this was some whacked-out version of heaven, Gabriel was long _dead_ after all.

'Are you still dead?' The sound flickered back in on _dead_ , but he couldn't hear Gabriel after that, couldn't relax even after Gabriel shook his head.

He was more insistent this time trying to get Dean to sit down and the truth was, Dean was dead on his feet, tired as hell and body long run out of every resource it needed. As if in response, the grace (if that's what it was) poked and prodded at him until he was sitting, but it didn't stop there, maneuvering him gently until his head was laying in Gabriel's lap. Honeyed eyes gazed down at him in smug satisfaction and Dean huffed, if that's what it came out as, yet relented. Moving didn't feel like much of an option anymore. The grace soothed his fears as long as he let it and dropped the fight, satisfied his gnawing hunger and threatening over-dehydration, but the caress over the harsh stubble shadowing his cheeks were real fingers, _human_ fingers and not mist or light or illusion.

Funny thing was, even though Dean couldn't hear a damn thing he somehow knew everything Gabriel was saying, could see his smile even beyond closed eyelids, knew everything was going to figure itself out even if he slept for just a little while….

 **FIN**


End file.
